The view from Jim Scala’s outdoor yoga studio would be the envy of any supermodel marketing her latest fitness video.
Scala’s studio is actually a wooden platform overlooking the Lafayette Reservoir. Several mornings a week, you’ll find the 79-year-old Lafayette nutritional expert there. Against a backdrop of blue water and oak-studded hills, he strikes a confident and serene warrior pose.
“I firmly believe that mental and physical fitness can’t be separated,” Scala says. “By maintaining physical health, you’re not just keeping your muscles in shape, it helps keep you in shape mentally. You’re going to feel better about yourself, and that good feeling is going to radiate out of you.”
The New Jersey native knows a lot about the connection between physical and mental fitness, starting with playing football and baseball as a boy then serving in the Air Force in the 1950s.
“In Air Force pilot training, I learned fighter pilots need to stay in top shape,” he says.
That knowledge solidified during his undergraduate, doctoral and postdoctoral studies in biochemistry and nutrition at Columbia, Cornell and Harvard.
His studies would lead to a long career in research, teaching, corporate management and writing. The author of nine books provided nutrition consulting for the U.S. Olympic ski team and three Mount Everest expeditions
For one of the Mount Everest expeditions in the 1980s, he worked with climber and vascular surgeon Ed Hixson on developing a capsule, containing olive oil, that provided a highly compact but vital source of nutrients for climbers who rapidly lose calories as they ascend high altitudes.
Over the years, he also collaborated with Alan Shepard and Gordon Cooper, two of the pioneering NASA astronauts who came to define the “Right Stuff” combination of mental and physical toughness.
“Gordon Cooper, he got me one of my neatest assignments. Walt Disney put me on their advisory board for the Epcot center,” he says, referring to one of the theme parks at Walt Disney World in Florida that has exhibitions focused on space travel and other technological innovations.
Perhaps his most memorable project was developing ways to feed and hydrate two pilots of the Voyager, which in 1986 became the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. The flight took nine days, and the two pilots feasted on specially made dry soups and high-fiber granola-type bars.
Scala, a volunteer on the project, was present when President Reagan awarded the two pilots and the craft’s designer Citizen’s Medals of Honor in Los Angeles in December 1986.
Scala’s books offer nutrition advice to people living with Crohn’s disease, high blood pressure, arthritis and other chronic conditions. He also offers tips on “eating right for a long life,” in his book “Prescription for Longevity.” Among the tips he follows: eating lots of fruits and vegetables and few sweets.
As for exercise, Scala starts his reservoir yoga sessions with a brisk 47-minute walk around the 2.7-mile course. On days he’s not at the reservoir, he works out on a home elliptical machine, but he does yoga every day. He became hooked on yoga when he took a class while on a cruise about 20 years ago.
Yoga can be a great way for people to stay in shape, especially as they get older, he says.
“It has a tremendous benefit for balance, which deteriorates as you get older,” he says.”
It also helps with breathing, posture and reducing stress. Thirty to forty minutes of yoga never fails to improve his sense of well-being.
“I find that after either my reservoir walk or my elliptical workout, it’s tempting to quit,” he says. “By overcoming that mental hurdle — and there are others — and doing my yoga poses motivates me to seize the day, to do good and be better.”
The father of four and grandfather of six plans to keep exercising as long as he can.
“I enjoy doing things with my wife, children and grandchildren. I want to be around them for years to come.”
